As a Forensic Anthropologist, I don’t get lucky very often, but since I have become a Forensic Anthropologist, the concept of luck has changed drastically. For example, when my dog found a dead body, I felt like the luckiest person in the world.
The first thing I did after consulting another Forensic Anthropologist, was lay out and examine the bones. This was in order to develop a profile for the victim. After laying them out, I was able to look at certain features of the bones. In cases where the victim is older, the vertebrae appears worn out. This victims vertebrae wasn’t worn out, and it was also shorter than the average adult. This tells us that our victim was young. Next, we looked at the many features of the skull, which would help us determine more about the victim’s race and age. The …show more content…
In the article “Giving Faces to the Lost”, Angela Libel says that if the victim has had dental work, dental records may be found. This is why we consulted a Forensic Odontologist to match dental records. Libel also says that identifying marks may be seen through medical records, which would narrow down our matches. By examining the victim’s teeth, we quickly learned that the victim would have most likely worn braces. We also noticed something very odd about her that could be used as a distinguishing feature, which was that her right hand appears to have stopped growing sooner than her left hand, resulting in an asymmetric bone size between them. Additionally, her arm appears to have been in a cast soon before her death. Using this information, we were able to match our victim’s features to over seventy hospital records. By narrowing out matches down to only people who have had braces, and then again to those who have been reported with asymmetric hands, we were left with only five potential identities for our